Other Languages You've Studied

[Bassoon]

Really? I have no trouble at all remembering words, but once I'm expected to be able to conjugate them, should they be verbs, all progress comes to a screeching halt. I probably need more constitution.

[kaleidoscopica]

I voted 3~

Spanish: 6 years - 2 in middle school + 4 in high school, and I guess everything they tried to teach us back in elementary was a good start too. Got a 6/7 on the HL IB test at the end of high school. Pretty good, can understand most things and still carry on decent conversations when needed. I'm going to spend a month in Mexico next May.
French: 4 years in high school simultaneous with Spanish... still can't decide if it was a help or a hindrance? 6/7 on SL IB test. I've forgotten quite a bit even though my skills used to be on par with my Spanish. I can understand what I read but I'm pretty bad at speaking on my own. To tell the truth I really don't care for the language that much, so retaining it isn't a top priority for me.
Japanese: hard to count. 2 official years in college, and I'm studying abroad in Tokyo at the moment. Not fluent but can generally converse with 日本人 with minimal obstacles, as well as play games and watch shows in Japanese without needing them translated.

but I do have a pirated version of Rosetta Stone with 27 languages on it that I like to bust out with from time to time even though I don't really approve of the teaching style. For a while I was studying Latin and German, but not very seriously since I just don't have the time right now and Japanese needs to be my top priority.

In general though learning languages comes pretty easily to me - I'm used to being at the top of my class without really even trying or studying. I want to learn as many languages as is possible for my mind to absorb, someday, and I feel like I'm off to a good start. I think the order I want to go is Korean -> German -> Mandarin Chinese -> Hindi -> Latin, but before I die I want to be able to speak Danish and Gaelic to go along with my heritage.

[fransisco4]

2

English: About 10 years.
French:Started this year.

And i can read Italian and Portuguese because i speak spanish.

[Liet Kynes]

1 1/2

German and I have just started Russian

[Kidiri]

Five:

Dutch (actually, my mother tongue, but I studied English, so it evens out, I guess)
French
German (only for 50 minutes a week for one year, but still)
Latin (passively)
Ancient Greek (same)

I also speak a few (useless) sentences of Spanish and one even less useful sentence Polish (which translates as: Don't sit on the radiator, bitch). That's about it, I guess...

[kaitou]

I've always been lousy at "other languages" (well, other than the computer variety), but...

Japanese

also minor, mostly forgotten shreds of French, Spanish, Latin and Russian.

[Lóng the Dragon]

Similar to Kidiri:

Dutch (actually, my mother tongue, but I studied English, so it evens out, I guess)
French (four years, about 2 hours per week, except holidays)
German (three years, about 2,5 hours per week, except holidays)
Latin (four and a half years now, one and a half to go)
Ancient Greek (two years, hardly remember anything)

[cooldude76]

Herm.
Lots of shit-useless self-taught internet shtuff.
Latin- Under a year, but I love it, and I'm planing on taking it the next 4 years, and probably beyond. puer est laeta quod magister docet latinus. The boy is happy because the teacher teaches latin. (Best I could do, meant to basically say "The boy is happy because he is learning latin". Whatever)
Russian- Attempted online learning... never went anywhere, can't say anything.
Japanese- Know a few characters (written & spoken), and some nonsense from various Anime.
Welsh- Attempting to learn it now. That would be auesome
1337- |)035 T|-|15 3V3/\/ C0|_|/\/T?!?!@!?!??!!2/1121!?@!?@!11!!!@?!!


Just a question to Non-American's (quite a lot of you, huh? ):

In your gradeskool/middle skool or collegiate education structures do you have to study your native language. For instance, in America we have to do 8-12ish years of "English" class, sometimes its "Grammar". You can also major in "English" in college. >.< ridiculous.

[ZLVT]

In Oz (specifically NSW) you do 'English' from yr7-12 (Only subject which is compulsory for your HSC). Alas, its focus is more on literature but without ever analysing them. So reading poetry and identifying some devices or "deeper meaning" but never really touching on metre and the finer points of it. Also, you never do classical works or foreign ones. Hence I learned more in Latin about english and world literature appreciation than I did in English. And no, we never did any grammar or such (all of which I learned from Latin too). And ofc you do one Shakespeare play per year from 9-12 (in order: Taming of the Shrew; Romeo & Juliet; Macbeth; King Leer) along with their film adaptions (ten things I hate about you, Baz Luhrman's Romeo & Juliet, a Japanese version of Macbeth, and various King Leer adaptions*) and some other films like bladerunner.

The poetry section is from yr 11-12 and comprises 4 poems per year:

yr11 (Keats)
Ode on a grecian urn
La belle dame sans merci
morningstar (?)
[can't rememebr this one]

yr12 (collerigde)
Ryme of the ancient mariner
Kubla Khan
this lime tree bower my prison
[can't rememeber]

I also chose to do the poetry medium (of a list of a picture, a poem, and various text excerpts as subject matter for part of an essay in the final exam) which was Robert Frost's "the road less taken".

The other 8 poems, comprising the only poems we were ever really taught (only the coleridge four of which could be assessed) were all romance era poems, and most sucked. I did Rhym and Kubla Khan (you only had to do 2 in the exam, or strictly, one if you chose ryme)

Your grammar and spelling are never corrected (thanks spell check), nor were they ever really taught. The BOS (board of studies) saw it more a matter of exposing us to a combination. The shcools were given a table at the start of the year, with a list of media down the side (poetry, book, film, etc) and themes across the top ('in the wild' and other such vague things) and the table gave subject materials which theoretically filled the boxes. Schools had to select texts so they spanned all media and themes, which meant that some bad choices were made deliberately in order to avoid even worse ones (in our case the film 'clueless' was avoided at all costs). I still have no idea what we were meant to do in those classes but some of the texts were interesting. Not form an linguistic point of veiw, or even literary, but interesting nonetheless.

*I saw one for an assessment, BRILLIANTLY done, the director was a knighted british actor and the whole thing was shot essencially in a single room with lighting effects that were unbelievable yet subtle. Anyone know which one I'm on about? I want to find a copy.

[Monika]

Just a question to Non-American's (quite a lot of you, huh? ):

In your gradeskool/middle skool or collegiate education structures do you have to study your native language. For instance, in America we have to do 8-12ish years of "English" class, sometimes its "Grammar". You can also major in "English" in college. >.< ridiculous.

I don't think there is any country where students don't have to study their native language at least until reaching an O-level / finishing mandatory education (which may be after the 8th to 11th year of schooling).

In Germany, German is mandatory in all grades, 1 to 13 (in some states it may be optional under certain circumstances in 13th grade) and of course one can major in Germanistik, too.

Spelling and grammar are taught in grades 1 to 8. (But there are three different levels of schooling, I recently talked to a 9th grade from the medium type, they still had spelling lessons in 9th grade.)

When I was in school, the first year was reading and writing, but states have varying concepts, currently many spread reading and/or writing across grades 1-3 ... some only printing the first two years and then learning cursive writing, others only reading "hand-written" material the first two years.

Poetry is taught in all years, in primary school the aim is mostly to learn the poem by heart and say it, with proper expression, in front of the class; in higher grades, especially 9-13, it's mostly interpretation. We only had very little on meter, we learned what a Jambus is, but that's it. We learned about rime forms (and rhyme is a misspelling ).

Same for reading books, short stories and the like. In primary school in early middle school level mostly contemporary things specifically for children are read, later old stuff (Goethe and the like, but we also read Romeo and Julia in German) and of course lots of WWII and post-WWII material.

Starting I think in year 2 "expression" is part of German class ... you would probably say "writing", but not as in learning to write the letters, more like writing essays and the like.

In the middle years, 5-10, acting was also part of German class. Not in all years and depending on the teacher and only a little bit per year.

Watching movies is not generally part of German class ... we never watched one, my sister mentioned they watched one and had to write about it.

Book reports are unheard of.

[cooldude76]

I think it has to do with learning two languages so early, but accents come super easily to me. I can speak in basically any accent I've heard a bit. I also tend to take on the accent of whoever's around me. Like, if I moved to England, I'd probably have a full English accent in about a week. Just having conversations with people of different accents, and I start to think with that accent. Scary stuff.

I sort of have that too... sort of.

Mine is moar like dialects. Or if i'm around people who swear alot, I swear moar, or the reverse. After movies my speech is always messed up. I'll start talking like whoever was in the movies (spy movie = i talk like a spie). It annoys my family.

Will

P.S. Autocorrect all i's to I's and proporize the grammar.

[Locoluis]

My native language is Spanish. I still can't quite understand spoken English, nor speak it fluently, mostly because of lack of practice. I write it reasonably well, with almost no typos and few grammatical errors.

I'm currently in the process of becoming fluent in Mapuzugun (Mapudungun), an indigenous language of Chile. My webcomic is
translated to Mapuzugun using a slighly modified Ragileo alphabet.

I've also studied, with various degrees of success, Japanese, Mandarin Chinese, Basque and even Ainu. I can make short phrases in Japanese and recognize many chinese characters, but that's it.

[OmegaLord]

Spanish since fourth grade, so right now I'm in 2.2 (now that that means anything), but still I use proper accents. I am fairly proficient, and have an okay vocabulary.
á = ALT + 160
é = ALT + 130 (I have no idea why)
í = ALT + 161
ó = ALT + 162
ú = ALT + 163
ñ = ALT + 164
I have no idea what the capitalizations are.

Latin as an independent thing; no real luck. Basically I can half-read anything using my spanish and english vocab and cognates. I have no way to determine tense, but I can generally get an idea. Eg. In nominae patriae et fillis et spiritus sanctus is surprisingly easy if you think about it. Yes, I have been watching Constantine recently, why? Note: Conjugation may be way off. Also I can count to ten.
Unus duo tres quattor quinque sex septem octo novem decem.

German because I was supposed to; my grandmother is german. All I can do is be polite, eg. Danke schern, Bitte. And count to three. Ein, Zwei, Drei.
Note: Spelling. It's bad.

[Monika]

Danke schön
ö = Alt + 0246 on Windows. (I don't know what it is without a leading 0.)

[iluvgrlzwglasses]

I'm going to consider that autodidacticism applies here.

English - Native Language
French - About 7 years of public educations. Unsurprisingly as a result of Canadian public humanities education is the worst of all
Japanese - About 3 years of self-studying on and off since I was 14. Since then my fluency has definitely increased up to an acceptable level (having actual conversations in Japanese, translating anime) and I would call it my secondary language.
Sindarin and Dwarfish - This was a hobby of mine in Grades 5 and 6. I got away with handing in English assignments in Tolkien's writing systems a surprising amount of times, although I didn't become very fluent in this and forgot most of it.
Arabic - This was a result of being raised in a Muslim family. As a child I had a few lessons but these were eventually forgotten, I want to take Arabic up again though sometime.

[Monika]

French - About 7 years of public educations. Unsurprisingly as a result of Canadian public humanities education is the worst of all

Wait, the Canadian public humanities education is bad because they teach 7 years of French? :confused:

[ZLVT]

No, I think his 7yrs of French is the worst of all his languages due to Canadian public education

On a personal note, if my transfer goes through, I will be studying Persian, German, and Fench officially, next year, and LAtin later on, swapping to ancient Greek after that. I hope to bring my Esperanto and Dutch up to scrath over the next 3yrs along with starting some Zulu Russian and Toki Pona.

[Monika]

No, I think his 7yrs of French is the worst of all his languages due to Canadian public education.

Oh, thanks.

Are languages humanities? I thought humanities = social sciences, like e.g. history and government classes.

[ZLVT]

They're often thrown in together. For instance, social sciences at my high school were history, geography etc, while English and foreign languages were humanites, but at my uni languages fall under "arts and social sciences" or "arts and asian studies" for asian languages

[innisen]

Also, what the hell is Finnish related to anyway? I want to say Russian, but I don't see any apparent similarities.

Russian has nothing to do with Finnish. Sure, we are next to each other and Russia ruled Finland for a long, bitter time, but the languages are not connected. Finnish has some words that have their roots in Russian, but other than that there's no connection. Just as Sweden ruled over Finland even longer than Russia, there's lot's of words that have been kidnapped from Swedish and adjusted to fit the mouths of the Finns.

Finnish belongs to a group called Finno-ugric languages, which of most are on the brink of an extinction since they are spoken in deep Russia in small areas. The closest relatives to Finnish are Estonian and Hungarian, which are more viable.

I hope there's the answer you wanted, if you hadn't found it yet.

I speak Finnish as my native language and I like to think that my English is fluent. I can have small talks in Swedish too, but not for long. I can speak it better than German, since only things I can say anymore are:
"Keine Ahnung."
"Warum hast du Rovanniemi gebraucht?" and
"Ich hade eine kügelbollen im meine lederhosen."
(if that last one even was written correctly...)
I've studied Japanese myself but I gave up since I don't trust the online sites.
And I know some frases from Sindarin, such as:
"Mae morn!"
"Solo vund lin, le rhaug 'waur." and
"Law, avo dago im!"

So three languages when not counting Japanese or Sindarin.

[odenskrigare]

I took several languages over secondary school / college, and used to read/write Swedish on forums and stuff, like Linuxportalen. I'm still fairly literate.

Currently, I am seriously studying Chinese (Putonghua). It is the only language besides English I really want to be fluent in, although I might pick up *some* Vietnamese at some point.

[Monika]

only things I can say anymore are:
"Keine Ahnung."
"Warum hast du Rovanniemi gebraucht?" and

= "Why have you needed Rovaniemi?" ... Why would anyone need a town?

"Ich hade eine kügelbollen im meine lederhosen."
(if that last one even was written correctly...)

Probably "Ich hatte eine Kügelbollen in meiner Lederhose" ... but what do you want "Kügelbollen" to mean?

[innisen]

I think the intended word for the Rovanniemi sentence was rauchen. The idea was sorta that someone has burned down the town...

And for the last one, I has no idea. Just somekind of a big ball? These both examples were only spoken out lout, I have not seen them on paper, nor do I have the translations. I suspect these both were meant to be funny, just because they make no sense to someone who speaks German well.

[Roĝer]

At least 6.

English as a native Dutch speaker,
6 years of Latin,
4 years of French,
3 years of German,
2,5 year of classical Greek,
and a few months on Esperanto (yet I speak it better than any but Dutch or English).

And besides that some weeks on Italian, Russian, Spanish and Swedish.

[Monika]

I searched for Kügelbollen to find if it is a Bavarian dialect word - there are 1880 hits, and they all seem to be on Finnish forums?! http://www.google.de/search?q=K%C3%BCgelbollen

[Eloth]

Just two, maybe 3 but not really (see below).

I spent 6 years of middle and high school studying Latin, mainly because it had no oral component.

Now in college I am in my second semester of Chinese, which I can understand and read fine but I am horrible at speaking or writing.

My mother also sent me to two or three years of Greek school when I was in elementary school. but I don't count that because basically all I learned was the alphabet, and some basic vocab.

[-KF-]

Latin: Fourth (and last ) year

German: Third year

[innisen]

I searched for Kügelbollen to find if it is a Bavarian dialect word - there are 1880 hits, and they all seem to be on Finnish forums?! http://www.google.de/search?q=K%C3%BCgelbollen

Thank you for the link, I found a lot of fun stuff. It was just as I suspected: Kügelbollen is a word that is supposed to mean bowling ball, and the whole sentence is just for fun. It is used to make fun of people who know German only so much that they can say "Hallo. Ich bin [insert name here]." So it seems that it is some kind of Finnish joke.

I'm sorry if this is offtopic.

[Monika]

The German word for bowling ball is Bowlingkugel .

And having a bowling ball in one's pants would certainly make walking rather difficult.

[Leftmost Cat]

For my own part, the following:

* Irish, off and on for a number of years; consistently on now, approaching fluency
* German, a couple of years here and there; can hold a short and uninteresting conversation
* Japanese, two and a half years at university; essentially understand the grammar and can puzzle my way through a very brief conversation
* French, a bit on the side; can make stupid requests of my flatmate
* Old English, one semester; have enough of a grasp of the grammar to translate accurately provided I have a dictionary
* Old Irish, one term and soon starting a second; can understand very simple sentences and synthesize pretty much nothing

I'd say I have a promising career in just generally mucking about.

[3_of_8]

Well, I'm a native speaker of German, so I didn't count that as "studied". I have English in school and I also speak, write and read a lot of it in my free time, still learning new stuff, but this doesn't count either.
So, I had Latin in school for five years and it kind of annoyed me in the end, which is why I dropped it in favour of English. I forgot a lot of it, but I still remember the basics and many words.
I had Spanish in school for one year and learned some more of it afterwards, I sometimes chat with people from Spain or South America and try to do it in Spanish, but it is kind of hard, I just don't know enough words and always have to use a dictionary.
I've also wanted to learn Swedish for years, but it's very hard to find a class for it, so all I could do is learn some Swedish with whatever I found on the web, which is not much, but I'm going to go to a class in the local adult education centre to learn it properly. However, I already know most of the grammar, I just have too few words.
I've also started to learn Chinese, which is kind of hard, not because of the grammar, which is very simple, but rather because the words all sound kind of similar and are hard to remember and even harder to understand. It's also hard to learn all the different characters and the meanings associated to them, although I can already read, write and understand fifty of them, I think.

So that'd be four non-English languages I've learnt. I'm not planning on learning any more languages at the moment, I'd rather improve in those I've already started for now. (I assume you're not asking for programming and markup languages, cos if you do, I'd have to list a few more\end{document})

[Benmukan]

Hello all!

Up until now I've studied:

Neo-Norwegian: Counts as a separate language from Norwegian and is mandatory in school

Norwegian: Native speaker

French: 8 years in school, and I'm fluent now... As in university/work level.

Czech: Studied in school for 4 years and can understand it but am not able to say anything of consequence

Japanese: Almost fluent, as in can talk about anything related to politics, history, culture, etc, but not hard science... Lived there for a year after high school and went to a language school. Learnt an immense amount of words in the short time I was there.

Korean: Have some listening tapes and I can say a couple of words.

Russian: Studying for a year as my gf is Russian and I might work there in the future..


That's more or less it....

[Aram]

I know Turkish and English (Native, parents were Turkish immigrants), I can speak and read to a certain degree in Russian (typing is a pain, though), I know esperanto to a great extent, I've tried to pick up a few scattered languages for fun like Danish (I know very little) and Diné Bizaad. That is about it.

[ilokoipi]

My native language is Finnish.

I've studied English since I was nine and I'm currently studying it at university alongside teaching, so I'll hopefully become an English (as a second language) teacher. I'm fluent in it and apparently I have a Canadian accent which is weird since I don't know what kind of accent Canadians have.

I've studied Swedish for six years, but can only take part in very short and simple conversations. This is bad, because I have a mandatory Akademisk Svensk course that I need to pass in order to get on with my studies.

I've taken French for five years and can understand and produce simple text, but have trouble understanding speech or to produce it myself. I like French and I would like to study it more, but the classes are held early in the morning, so I'm too lazy to put in the effort to wake up at the crack of dawn.

I took German for two years in sixth form (high school/upper secondary school/lukio), but all I can say is "Ich habe ein Sauerkraut in meiner Lederhose" a sentence that I suppose is one of the first ones Finnish German teacher teach their students. (I'm of course referring to innisen's earlier post.)

I went to some Norwegian classes purely for the heck of it while I was au pairing in Scotland. Having studied Swedish before, I was the brightest pupil and probably annoyed all the other people with my "Jag vet! Fråga mig!" (I know! Ask me! in English)

Simply for the study points I took a beginners course in Italian this fall and found it quite difficult. Apparently it's hard to learn something when you're not a) actually listening to the teacher, b) doing any of the homework or c) generally paying attention. I passed the course and got the points, mission accomplished. Can't speak Italian to save my life, unless the magic words are "ho fame".

[3_of_8]

Well, actually, the correct sentence would be "Ich habe Sauerkraut in meiner Lederhose.", and to all those who do not speak any German: That means "I have pickled cabbage in my lederhosen."

Och du var i Skottland? Vär var du? Jag kommer att resa till Edinburgh med skolan nästa år.

[ZLVT]

I have recently begun learning Hebrew. It's still very basic of course, but I'm improving quickly.

[Chfan]

I'm learning Japanese extremely slowly and informally, but I'm taking Honors Spanish II as well.

[AVbd]

I speak Linuksh. Here, I translated some of your comments into it:

á = <compose>, <apostrophe>, a
é = <comp>, <apostrophe>, e
í = <comp>, <apostrophe>, i
ó = <comp>, <apostrophe>, o
ú = <comp>, <apostrophe>, u
ñ = <comp>, <tilde>, n
I have every idea what the capitalizations are, they're the same as the uncapitalized versions, but with a capital letter at the end

Danke schön
ö = <comp>, <double quote>, o on Linux.

<runs away>

[Kalathalan]

One: Hawaiian.

I can't hold a continuous conversation, because I haven't had enough practice, but I can translate fairly well to and from Hawaiian. I don't understand the more subtle syntax and nuances of the language, but I could probably translate a long narrative with ease. (Technical phrases are stumpers, because Hawaiian has a limited vocabulary for modern ideas.)

Mandarin has been on my to-learn list since the Olympics. I've taught myself pronunciation, but I can't get the tones correct. I've also learned several short words and phrases, like 我是美国人 and 北京欢迎你

[Monika]

The first is "Wo shi mei guo ren" = "I am American", but what does the second one say?